Fuzzy Mud

by Louis Sachar

  Her doctor gave her large black-framed glasses that were too big for her face. Seeing him clearly for the first time, she nearly fainted. With soft brown eyes and curly hair, he was even cuter than Mr. Franks.

  “I get all flustered and tongue-tied when he looks at me,” she told Monica over the phone. “It’s a good thing I didn’t know what he looked like before. Everyone would have thought I had all kinds of horrible side effects. I probably would have forgotten my own name!”

  Monica laughed.

  “You don’t sound so scared anymore,” Tamaya noticed.

  “I know. I think it’s all the snow. I mean, I know the mud’s still there, underneath, but everything just seems safer. And I’m just so happy you’re almost all better!”

  Tamaya could hear a crack in her best friend’s voice. It sounded like she was crying. Tamaya started to cry too. Then they both laughed at the fact that they were crying. They stayed on the phone a while longer, crying and laughing at the same time.

  —

  One day in late December, Tamaya’s doctor was checking her pulse while she watched television.

  A TV set hung from the ceiling in the corner of her hospital room. She could feel her heart rate quicken at his touch. She hoped it didn’t throw off his measurements.

  Her TV program was interrupted by a breaking news story from Heath Cliff, Pennsylvania. Her doctor let go of her wrist and picked up the remote. He raised the volume.

  A man was standing in the back of Woodridge Academy, near the edge of the woods. He was surrounded by news reporters. The bar across the bottom of her TV identified him as Dr. Peter Smythe, deputy director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It felt odd watching something on TV that was happening right at her school. Snow was falling outside her hospital window, and she could see it falling on the man on TV. Tamaya thought he looked more like a lumberjack than a doctor. He had a thick bushy beard and held a shovel.

  The man dug his shovel through the snow, and then, with his bare hand, reached down and pulled out a big glob of black goo.

  “Fuzzy mud,” he said. Ice crystals stuck to his beard, and Tamaya could see his frozen breath as he spoke. “I’m holding in my hand more than a billion of your so-called frankengerms.”

  Tamaya felt all tingly again, watching him hold the mud just like she had once held it.

  “And I’m happy to report that every last one of them is dead,” the man said. “The organism cannot survive subfreezing temperatures.”

  Tamaya and her doctor looked at each other. Could this really be true?

  Several of the reporters applauded, and Tamaya could hear cheers coming from other rooms in the hospital.

  “Does this mean the crisis is over?” a reporter asked.

  Before Dr. Smythe answered, the bar at the bottom of the TV screen had already proclaimed CRISIS OVER! FRANKENGERMS ALL DEAD!

  Tamaya wondered how they could know for sure. Maybe the frankengerms were just hibernating, like bears.

  “How do you know they’re not simply lying dormant?” a reporter asked, almost as if she were channeling Tamaya’s thoughts. “How do you know they won’t wake up again when the weather turns warmer?”

  “We’ve examined them in our labs. I’ve personally looked through a microscope and seen the disintegrated membranes. I assure you, they will not wake up.”

  Still, Tamaya wondered, how could he know they were all dead? Maybe somewhere beneath all that snow, there was one that was still alive.

  “Of course, the CDC will continue to monitor the situation,” Dr. Smythe said. “Although extremely unlikely, it is possible that another mutation could have occurred. Somewhere out here there may be one mutated ergonym capable of surviving the freezing cold. We’ll know more after the snow melts.”

  2 × 1 = 2

  The quarantine was lifted.

  Under the direction of the National Institutes of Health, Dr. Crumbly’s cure was mass-produced. It successfully treated more than sixty thousand people and animals afflicted with the Dhilwaddi Blister Rash—the now official name of that particular medical condition. Medical books were being updated with before-and-after photos of Tamaya Dhilwaddi’s skin.

  —

  Two weeks after being discharged, Tamaya and Marshall returned to the hospital, this time as visitors. Tamaya brought jars of homemade strawberry jam, belated Christmas presents for her doctor and nurses. Marshall carried a plastic food container.

  Tamaya still wore glasses, but Monica had given her new ones for Christmas. The frames were neon green and semitransparent. Monica told her they were très chic, French for “very stylish.”

  Tamaya’s hair had begun to grow back. She wore a pink cap over what she called her fuzzy head. She had some scars on her hand and arm, which her doctor said would fade. There was a pockmark on her face, which her friend Summer insisted only made her prettier.

  “In order to be perfect, everyone woman needs an imperfection,” Summer had told her.

  This sounded like an oxymoron to Tamaya, but it was still nice to hear.

  —

  After Tamaya gave the strawberry jam to Ronda, Ronda said she had something for her too.

  She handed her a flat box. Tamaya opened it to find a new school sweater.

  “How’d you know?” She couldn’t remember ever telling Ronda about the sweater. “You shouldn’t have. It’s way too expensive.”

  “It’s not from me,” Ronda explained. “The box arrived here for you yesterday. I’ve been trying to figure out how to get it to you.”

  Tamaya discovered a small card, which read, For a girl of extraordinary virtue and valor. It was signed Your friend, Fitzy.

  “Who’s Fitzy?” Marshall asked, reading over her shoulder.

  “I thought I dreamed him,” Tamaya answered, mystified. “Good thing I didn’t ask for a piano!”

  “What?” asked Marshall.

  —

  Chad Hilligas was one of the few rash patients still in the hospital. The skin on his face had been so badly damaged, he had been put in a ward usually reserved for severe burn victims.

  The door opened as Tamaya knocked. “Hello?” she said as she entered. Marshall was no longer with her.

  Chad was sitting up in bed, wearing green pin-striped pajamas. A ray of sunlight shone through the window, highlighting a shaft of dust particles and casting a glare across his heavily scarred face. He wore a pair of the hospital-issued black-framed glasses.

  Tamaya was happy to see the glasses. If he’d been blind, there would have been no need for them.

  “Tamaya!” he said.

  She was afraid he might hate her again, because of what she’d done to him, but he seemed glad to see her.

  “Hi, Chad.” She set down her sweater box, then stuck her hands into the back pockets of her jeans. “How are you doing?”

  “I’m not supposed to move my mouth too much,” he said, keeping his face noticeably still as he spoke. “They had to take skin from another part of my body and put it on my face.”

  “Oh,” said Tamaya. “You still look like you,” she assured him.

  “Just call me Buttface,” he said.

  She was shocked. “You mean they…” She covered her mouth with her hand. “At least you think it’s funny. Instead of being all mad and everything.”

  “Nothing makes me mad,” he said. “It’s weird. Ever since I could see again, the world just looks a lot better than it did before.”

  “I know what you mean,” Tamaya agreed. “Everything’s beautiful.”

  “I hope it lasts,” said Chad.

  “Me too,” said Tamaya.

  She wasn’t sure if Chad meant he hoped the world lasts, or if he hoped it continues to look beautiful. Either way, she agreed with him.

  The door pushed farther open as Marshall backed his way into the room. He turned around, holding a tray with three plates of lasagna.

  “The nurses let me use the microwave.”

  “Happy birthday!”
exclaimed Tamaya.

  Chad didn’t say anything. He stared at the food, then looked from Marshall to Tamaya, and back to Marshall.

  “He’s not supposed to talk,” Tamaya told Marshall, then quietly whispered, “His butt was transplanted onto his face.”

  Chad pulled back his covers, then slowly slid down from the bed. He stepped toward Marshall, who set down the tray and nervously backed away.

  It might have been all the talk about frankengerms, but with his scarred and rigid face, and his now outstretched arms, Tamaya thought Chad looked a little bit like the Frankenstein monster.

  Marshall backed up against the wall. Chad clasped Marshall by the shoulders, pulled him close, and hugged him.

  “Thanks, man,” Chad said.

  Marshall twisted free. “It was Tamaya’s idea.”

  Tamaya laughed at Marshall’s awkwardness. She wondered why boys were always so weird about hugging, but then her heart stopped when Chad’s eyes fixed on her. He opened his arms wide and said the same three words he’d said to her once before.

  “You’re next, Tamaya.”

  The following testimony is excerpted from the transcript of the Heath Cliff Disaster Hearings:

  Senator Haltings: So when you returned to the woods to look for Chad, did you see more of the mud?

  Tamaya Dhilwaddi: Yes. Just about everywhere I looked! But there could have been more of it the first day too. I just didn’t know to look for it then.

  Senator Wright: Please speak directly into the microphone, Tamaya. We’re having trouble hearing you.

  Tamaya Dhilwaddi: Sorry. I said, the first time I went into the woods, I didn’t know about the fuzzy mud, so I wasn’t looking for it. All I could think about was wanting to get out of there.

  Senator Haltings: Because it was against the rules to go into the woods?

  Tamaya Dhilwaddi: But I wasn’t allowed to walk home alone either.

  Senator Haltings: Hobson’s choice.

  Tamaya Dhilwaddi: I don’t know what that is.

  Senator Haltings: Hobson’s choice. It’s when you have to choose between two options and they’re both bad.

  Tamaya Dhilwaddi: Yes, they were both bad.

  Senator Wright: Well, Tamaya, speaking on behalf of this committee, we are very glad you chose to follow Marshall into the woods. The two of you may have saved the world.

  Tamaya Dhilwaddi: But everyone got the rash because of me.

  Senator Wright: No. From everything the scientists told us, that would have happened anyway. Maybe a week or two later. And by then it would have been too late to contain it.

  Senator Haltings: The quarantine wouldn’t have been in place. Someone could have stepped in the fuzzy mud, gotten on a plane, and flown to Los Angeles, or Paris, or Hong Kong. We could have had a worldwide epidemic, and in places where the temperature never drops below freezing.

  Senator Wright: Thanks to you, Marshall, and Chad, the country got an early warning.

  Senator Haltings: You’re a very brave young lady, Tamaya.

  Tamaya Dhilwaddi: I wasn’t brave. I was scared. Marshall’s the brave one.

  Senator Foote: So how does it feel to have a disease named after you?

  Tamaya Dhilwaddi: It’s a great honor…I guess?

  Epilogue

  For hundreds of thousands of years, human beings lived in a world without Biolene. There was no gasoline, no nuclear power plants, and no electric lights. Water was clean, and the night sky glittered with a million stars.

  There were also fewer people in the world.

  It is estimated that a thousand years ago, there was a total of about three hundred million people living on earth. World population didn’t reach the one billion mark until the early 1800s. But by the 1950s, that number had more than doubled. In 1951, more than two and a half billion people inhabited the planet.

  By the 1990s, world population had doubled yet again. And in 2011 it was reported that there were more than seven billion of us eating, drinking, driving cars, using bathrooms, day after day after day.

  2 × 7,000,000,000 = 14,000,000,000

  2 × 14,000,000,000 =

  Which is why, even after the Heath Cliff Disaster, the Senate Committee on Energy and the Environment voted unanimously to support the continued production of Biolene. The committee was presented with a Hobson’s choice: either risk worldwide catastrophe or give up on a source of clean, affordable energy. They concluded that the risk of catastrophe was extremely small.

  They hoped.

  Jonathan Fitzman assured the committee that there would be new safety procedures. This included taking daily samples from the storage tanks in order to test for oxygen-tolerant ergonyms. If even one such ergie was found, all the “little fellows” inside the tank would be destroyed.

  Soon, Biolene-powered cars and trucks would fill the highways. SunRay Farm would establish new farms in Michigan, Idaho, and New Mexico—sites chosen either for their cold winters or for their lack of vegetation. Scientists determined that the frankengerms had thrived as well as they had because of all the organic material in the woods. The ergies were especially fond of freshly fallen leaves.

  —

  One week after returning from Washington, DC, Tamaya still felt a glow of excitement from the experience. Everyone had told her how well she’d done, praising her maturity and poise. Monica kept reminding her that she was famous.

  It was scary returning to the woods again. It was scary climbing up Chad’s tree, especially wearing clunky snow boots and fat gloves. Chad in front, and Marshall right behind, both promised they wouldn’t let her fall. She didn’t dare look down.

  The climb, the cold, and her fear of heights left her short of breath but also exhilarated when she reached the cross boards that Chad had nailed into place.

  “Isn’t it great?” Chad beamed.

  “Awesome!” Marshall agreed.

  Tamaya held tight to the tree as she looked out across the frozen woodlands. The world was so beautiful. She just hoped it would stay that way…after the snow melted.

  Tamaya Dhilwaddi

  Room 308

  Heath Cliff Regional Hospital

  December 9

  Late Assignment

  How to Blow Up a Balloon

  1. You start with a flat balloon. (The color doesn’t matter.) You want to fill it with air from your lungs.

  2. Look for the knobby end. If you stick your finger through it, your finger will be inside the balloon. But don’t stick your finger in there!

  3. Okay, put the knobby end inside your mouth. Your lips should be tight around the knob so that when you blow, all your air will go into the balloon and not around it.

  4. Okay. Hold the balloon between your first and second fingers. You have to hold it loose enough to allow air in, but tight enough so that it doesn’t move.

  5. Now blow.

  6. Repeat step five until the balloon is full.

  7. Between blows, you will need to take breaths. Be sure to squeeze your fingers tight around the balloon when breathing in, so that the air can’t escape.

  8. Okay, now you have to tie the balloon. That’s the hardest part! Tightly hold the balloon between your first and second fingers so that no air gets out. There will be a little dangly piece of your balloon left over. Stretch out that part and wrap it once around your finger. Then tie it into a knot by slipping the knobby end between your finger and the part wrapped around it.

  9. Remove your finger. Ta-da!

  About the Author

  LOUIS SACHAR is the author of the New York Times #1 bestseller Holes, winner of the Newbery Medal, the National Book Award, and the Christopher Award. He is also the author of Stanley Yelnats’ Survival Guide to Camp Green Lake; Small Steps, winner of the Schneider Family Book Award; and The Cardturner, a Publishers Weekly Best Book, a Parents’ Choice Gold Award recipient, and an ALA-YALSA Best Fiction for Young Adults book. His books for younger readers include There’s a Boy in the Girls’ Bathroom, The Boy Who Lost His
Face, Dogs Don’t Tell Jokes, and the Marvin Redpost series, among many others.